All posts tagged Groupon

BERLIN—Groupon, a leading coupon sharing service, and Deutsche Telekom, Germany’s telecommunications giant, disclosed today that the two are partnered in Europe.

Under the terms, Groupon will share its services with Telekom’s European customers without the need for a separate download. Many in the blogosphere have noted how great a deal this is for Groupon, whose stock has fallen since it launched on the NASDAQ in November. It gives the Chicago-based deals site access to its 128 million mobile customers, as well as the company’s 35 million fixed-network lines, according to the press release. Groupon’s stock has already jumped 4.9% today to $19.20.

But it’s important to note that the deal seems to be a boon for DT as well. The German wireless firm has been working hard to shed its stodgy image and build a business in the exciting world of internet services. Groupon is a big brand, and well-known amongst the digerati for spurning an offer from Google and charting its own path. The Financial Times Deutschland, which broke the story, reported that the company is looking to make an extra €2-to-3 billion in revenue from these services by 2015. Assuming that the carrier gets a cut every time one of its customers takes advantage of a Groupon deal, that could add up to a sizable sum.

“I can’t comment on any of the speculation around that stuff,” said Mr. Mason, speaking with Kara Swisher of Wall Street Journal sister website All Things Digital. Mr. Mason danced around additional prodding on the issue.

Dennis Crowley, CEO of location check-in service Foursquare, is a guest speaker here at DLD. We interviewed him at LeWeb back in December, and got a chance to catch up in Munich before he went on stage.

He shared some good figures. Although still barely two years old, Foursquare is now about 50 employees serving 6 million users and built on some $20 million of V.C. money; estimates value it at $250 million. About 40 per cent of its traffic is international. He showed me a map of checkins around the world. The map showed checkins in pretty well every city in the developed world.

“When I was shown that, it was pretty amazing. I told the team ‘We are much bigger than you imagine’,” he said.

One of the big changes has been his space has got a lot more crowded. Both Facebook and Groupon represent challenges to Foursquare, particularly in the relationship between merchants and customers—a space that all three want to own. And both of them are huge. Facebook is, well, Facebook; and Groupon turned down a $6 billion offer from Google.

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